[regional_school] Re: Steve Nelson

From: Keith Rankin <keithwrankin@xxxxxxxxxxx>

To: Regional School <regional_school@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2010 09:27:02 -0500

Socrates was ahead of his time. Fast forward to the Information Age where the
answers are out there, but one must know how to artfully ask the question. And
know how to question the answer. What is more important, the questions asked or
the answers given? Is education about teaching or learning? And what about
goodness, an important subject to Socrates along with truth and usefulness. Was
John Philips right that "goodness without knowledge is weak and feeble, and
knowledge without goodness is dangerous?"
Keith
Keith W. Rankin
44 Creston Court
Rochester, NY 14612
585.734.7295 cel | txt
To: regional_school@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [regional_school] Re: Steve Nelson
From: neilcho@xxxxxxx
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2010 17:44:23 -0500
If it were up to Socrates, that question would be answered by another question.
Neil
-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Rankin <keithwrankin@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Regional School <regional_school@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Mon, Dec 13, 2010 9:47 am
Subject: [regional_school] Re: Steve Nelson
I wonder in the History of Education how many "standardized tests" or
"authentic assessments" Socrates gave?
Keith
Keith W. Rankin
44 Creston Court
Rochester, NY 14612
585.734.7295 cel | txt
From: wcala@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: regional_school@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [regional_school] Steve Nelson
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2010 07:48:13 -0500
An interesting piece by Steve Nelson via Norm Scott from NYC.
Excerpts from Steve Nelson's The Disservice of a 'Rigorous' Education
Tests, standards, accountability, economic competitiveness, managers, vouchers,
data, metrics... does anyone actually care about children?
While multi-billionaires like Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates and Eli Broad talk
about tough management and data-driven reform, real children languish in abject
poverty. That's unfair enough, but then we also rob them of their childhoods.
Everything is about money, even their small lives. Social scientists talk about
poor kids' education as an "investment" and act as though the worth of children
is in their development as resources for the competitive marketplace.
Jean De La Bruyère, a 17th century French moralist and philosopher, once wrote:
"Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present --
which seldom happens to us." In the South Bronx or in Grosse Pointe, children
are too often deprived of the present. At each end of the economic spectrum, we
are pressing children harder and harder in the service of a "rigorous"
education. It is not mere semantic coincidence that the word "rigor" is most
often paired with the word "mortis."
As De La Bruyère wrote, the present seldom happens to us. But the present is
all that children have.
It's heartbreaking to hear administrators and politicians talk about children
as raw material to be crafted into productive cogs in the global economy.
Read it all: http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_atrocities.php?id=4072